At around 11:00pm Mountain (just ten minutes from the moment I started writing this post) I came into this world and into the hands of my trusted and amazing parents. From being born in Montana to growing up as a young boy in Portland to becoming who I was in Denver it has been an amazing life to have lived. From cowboys to yuppies (sorry Portland) and back to a One Horse Town where I experienced life changing events through middle school and where I cemented my relationship with Christ.

To high school where I had the most amazing, patient and accepting friends and where we all experienced Columbine personally at our very core. Through that year and into the future who I was to be was pulled together from what I had been for the last seventeen years. In those moments I slowly began to understand God’s plan for my life in a very small way.

As the days of high school faded I found myself striking out on my own and doing what had long been expected. Getting the heck outta the house and away from the parents. Through two colleges (and no degrees in the end) I found myself back in Denver and working. From working as customer service at Circuit City to being a Janitor at a church and then finding my way to a call center I had learned so much about the human condition I wondered just how deep the rabbit hole of being a creation of God went.

I was about to find out as I flew spinning and careening into the Philippines to learn some of the hardest lessons of my entire life so far. From culture shock to understanding people in a way differently to knowing where home was, it continued to cement in my heart, soul and mind what being Aaron DeLay means.

I am the product of my parents. I am honored to have have such people to raise me. God blessed me with a great father who was, is and will always be strong in the Lord. He towered above me when I was smaller and even today I feel small in his great shadow. He broke the mold of what I knew of fathers through my friends. It was pure God that I ended up with such a Man of God to call my father.

God also blessed (or cursed…just kidding Mom!) me with a great mother who showed the greatest care for me and my brother through the last 25 years. From always asking me what was going on to never giving up on me and refusing to let anything stop me from being who I wanted to be. She never forced me into things I didn’t want. I think she secretly knew where I was headed sometimes. Her wisdom, kindness and compassion has spanned 25 years and I never want that to end.

My parents always provided what they could but always reminded me what I needed and what I wanted…and what the difference was. They had parties for my friends. They put up with my insanity. They guided me through 25 years life in what can only be described as a miracle. They’ve continued to stand just to the side and behind. And for that I am thankful.

And so 25 years isn’t about me and what I’ve done. It is more a reflection of my parents and who they are. They are what has brought me here. Through their words, actions and decisions it is directly connected to my life. Without them and God I could not have made it this far to where I stand now, at the cusp of adulthood.

Thank you Mom and Dad. For the days where I screamed. threw unknown amounts of tantrums. For the faces and stubbornness passed to me from Grandpa Otto. For the laughter that filled our house. For the family meetings that never seemed to end. For being the greatest parents anyone could have been given. I wasn’t worthy to have you as my guide through life.

I can only hope to guide my future family in much the way you have led me. Thank you for the last 25 years.

And to many more to follow as we as a family continue to make this journey called life.

I declare bull poopery!

Not that I’m not living a dream. I’m alive. I have a good paying job. I live in a amazingly nice part of town although my brother made the observation that most of the people he saw while he was in town were people who were still recovering from the flower power days. His words, not mine. I have a car. I have a family who mostly loves me and I love in the Greatest City in the World…Denver Colorado where the weather hasn’t taken it’s medication and continues to operate in a schizophrenic mindset.

It’s weird being 25 years old. You see many of your friends getting married, having children and moving into homes, condos and apartments and settling down. Most of my friends have graduated from college and are now fully integrated in the rat race. Many of my peers are alarmingly successful in life or at least that’s what Facebook tells me.

It’s a pendulum of emotions when you reflect back on your life. Had I stayed in college and suffered it out rather than running from school to school until I decided to take a year off and then found myself taking five years off and seemingly stuck in perpetual cycle of going back to school and running straight back after finding out night classes are a drain on the power of the already taxed and small mind I inhabit.

Then you swing Tarzan style to the other side where you find my visit to the Philippines for a year and a half doing something I’d never done before and working with people I’d never experienced and dealing with a foreign culture that at first threatened to give me a brain aneurysm. In that year and a half I was literally refined in the fire, dusted off and then sent careening through a gauntlet of blazing moments of pain, smiles and learning only to come out with bandages strapped to my body and a new wisdom shoved into my now bursting at the seems brain cavity.

So I look back on the 25 years and find myself wondering what would have been different had I made simple choices to take a different highway or side street. I realize life could have been very different for me but reality is it wouldn’t have been this life. Sometimes I doubt myself as to the choices I’ve made and as I get closer to my 25 year on this planet I can’t help but think about it.

I also have to realize that this life is the one I have. The one God gave me. And if I don’t like it or I continually pine for what could have been…I suspect the big man would have a few words for me up to and including, “suck it up.”

So I can remember, imagine and wonder. But in the end I have to accept this life and path I’m on. Because it’s the only one I get.

Unless God has hidden a “reset” button somewhere around here.

On April 2nd, I celebrate 25 years alive.  See here for details on the show and more to come.